Google has been in the limelight recently for fostering collaboration across whole industries with the Open Handset Alliance and the Open Social Initiative.

Larry Page, Google's cofounder, wants to bring the price of a gigawatt of renewable energy - enough to power a city the size of San Fransciso) below that of coal and added that Google would be more than willing to share the technology with others.

The project will be overseen by the not-for-profit branch of Google, Google.org

But it will probably take the best part of a decade (or more) for Google's project to come to fruition.